


Fidget

by starrypawz



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Anxiety, Character Study, Gen, Stimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 01:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11151552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrypawz/pseuds/starrypawz
Summary: Alistair can't stay still





	Fidget

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting this because for some reason I managed to delete this a while ago. This was inspired by a headcanon/fiction involving Alistair being a 'creative' person.   
> Originally written and posted to my tumblr on the 6th June 2016

_It used to get so quiet at the monastery that I would start screaming until one of the brothers came running. I would tell them that I was just checking. You never know, right?_

Alistair can’t be still.

Keep him moving he’s fine, morning drills or long marches he’s _fine._ He’s calm he can keep going, one foot in front of the other. Give him a sword and a shield, he moves, he practically dances, he knows his formations can do them with his eyes shut.

Everyone else seems to hate early morning runs. He relishes them, he’s moving, one foot in front of the other, cold air filling his lungs, his feet hitting the ground like a heartbeat.

_Moving_

Have him be still.

He can’t 

_He’ll grow out of it, it’s a matter of discipline_ soon fall by the wayside, he grows, the urge is still there no matter how he tries to damp it.

He _has_ to move

He can’t help it.

His fingers drum against his thighs, covers of books books, slates and tables. It draws looks and sighs from those around him.

He stops. But then his leg starts to move seemingly of his own accord, more looks and sighs.

And then _he_ sighs.

His mouth is seldom still. If it’s not his hands or feet moving, it’s his mouth, sometimes it’s _all three_ _at once_. He bounces, his hands dance as he talks, he feels people must get exhausted listening to him. He talks, everything and anything, it’s as if whatever goes into his mind has to come out. He rambles, he laughs, all he knows is no part of him seems capable of staying still.

 _Maybe I should run to Antiva, join a troupe._ He thinks on at least one occasion in a fit of desperation, there was one that came through Denerim sometimes…

He’s not even still when he sleeps. He ‘sleeps like a log’ but he’s seldom in the same position when he wakes. He often finds himself with one foot out of the covers, or the covers on the floor and there’s more sighs from the others in the dormitory because he’s _moving. Again._

Meditations, he tries, Maker above he _tries._ Head down, eyes closed, on his knees like everyone else. But he can’t do it. He feels it prickling along his spine.

_I have to move._

He feels his shoulders twitch, his toes. His fingers, they’re clasped in prayer but they seem to wrestle against themselves.  He sighs silently and repeats the canticles in his head until they have no meaning and he feels himself itch with the effort of staying still.

A little band of silver against his finger, a personal effect, frowned upon but he keeps it still. When he got it had little words on it and images but they’re all but rubbed clear that he can’t really remember what was even on there to start. A Mabari he thinks, or maybe it was Andraste? Maybe it was a Mabari as Andraste? Who knows. All he knows is the silver surface is tarnished now.

_But_

Place a charcoal in his hand, give him some parchment.

He finds himself still. Charcoal scratches against parchment, leaving its dark marks and that feeling from when he has a sword, when he’s running, when he’s _moving_ is there again.  That feeling, the one that seems to bring him to ease.

 More so, as blasphemous as it sounds as any meditation or vigil.

He is _still_.

 


End file.
